One Sunday Morning on Barren River
(The body was floating face down)
Screen 1 of 3One Sunday morning in the early 1930's, my mother and I were sitting on the front porch of our log house located on the top of a cliff overlooking Barren River. Sundays were always a quiet time in that river setting--just right for leisurely conversation and reading. The nearby county road, quite busy during the rest of the week with cars, trucks, and motorcycles speeding to and from Bowling Green, was used on weekends only by a few families and small groups of young people who would tow their boats down this road before launching them at Thomas' Landing just below our house to begin short pleasure trips on the river.
Usually, we would swim across the river and back at least once Sundays before attending church services in town, but this particular morning we were just talking and reading the Louisville Courier Journal, when we heard the soft hum of a small outboard motor boat coming slowly up the river. Just before reaching our house, its motor was shut off, and a woman seated in the boat beside a man began calling my mother's name in a loud voice, "Mrs. Travelstead, Mrs. Travelstead, are you there?" After we responded from the edge of the porch high above them, the woman exclaimed, "We saw a dead man floating in the river about a mile downstream. Could you call somebody in town and tell them about this?"
My mother, always one to get to the heart of a matter quickly, suggested that instead of calling someone, the four of us should go find the body and pull it out of the river, adding that if we waited for someone to come out from town which was four miles away, it might be too late.
I thought she had made a good point and was therefore astounded at the answer she received from those in the boat. I shall never forget what they said. Whether it was the young woman, whom we knew well, or her husband there beside her, I do not remember; but one of them announced almost haughtily they just couldn't possibly do that. They were headed for a picnic with some friends, we were told, and that they just did not have the time to go back and look for a dead man's body. Besides, the husband added, he just couldn't bear to think about touching a body that had been floating in the river, even if we could find it.
I answered by pointing out that with their motor boat, it would not take very long, but that if my mother and I had to use our only boat, a little fiat-bottom skiff that we paddled by hand, it would take much longer and would be considerably more difficult coming back upstream against the current.
But neither my words nor those of my mother had any effect. The two in the boat said they were sorry but that they had to go on, and with that, the man started the motor and they were soon out of sight up the river.
In silent disbelief of what we had just heard, my mother and I just looked at each other for an instant and then began doing what we both knew had to be done. We'll need a rope to use in pulling the body into the boat, she said hurriedly as she put on her bathing suit; and I reminded her that we should take a blanket to cover the body and also two paddles for the boat, since paddling back upstream against the current would not be easy.
Within a few minutes, we had untied our little boat from the makeshift dock and were on our way downstream. The flow of the current, along with both of us paddling, made the trip easy and relatively fast. But of course we were tense and apprehensive, as we started looking for the body. The couple had said it was about a mile downstream when they saw it. If their estimate was correct, then we knew that by this time it could be as much as two miles away from our house.
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